It sounds paradoxical, but the Marx of our time is an economist. I am referring to the Frenchman Thomas Piketty. In a way, the fact that the champion of a new communism is just that, an economist, seems like an assumption that capitalism has come to stay, disguising everything. But what it does not have to mean is that Piketty advocates the current rampant consumerism. Because the debauchery of so-called liberalism does not always have to be attached to the conception of capitalism.
In fact healthy economic ambition can be understood as an addition, a construct of welfare societies and an incentive to develop any activity (even as a differentiating fact for those who end up earning it, if you want). What cannot be understood is that, like all horizons, it is advocated that ambition must have an expeditious path without any conditions.
Because from there the inequalities start and there lies the deception with which the powerful indirectly subject, and without effort or conflict, so many would-be rich people who end up competing in unequal conditions for the mere fact of not having arrived, precisely, never rich.
That is why it is cool to read Piketty and have him there as a head economist to understand that not everyone in his union dreams of being an adviser to Lehman Brothers or the vulture fund on duty. Being an economist can also mean looking for alternatives to a new liberated economy from only its semantics of pejorative extremes.
Top 3 Recommended Books by Thomas Piketty
The Economics of Inequalities
It is true that Piketty is not looking for the Nobel Prize for peace or good vibes, at least. His intellectual concerns move towards economic balance in an almost scientific way. That undoubtedly everything points to sustainability and the common good, of course too. In fact, recognizing inequalities as part of the current balance of the world is already an open intention to put on the table the crudeness and even cruelty of the powerful and the little power that a social democracy already has on the game board.
The increase in inequalities generated by an avid and uncontrolled capitalism is the great theme of this book. Why should a group of wealthy heirs have an income forbidden to those who only have their workforce and talent?
Drawing on a monumental and constantly updated database, and distancing himself from traditional positions on both the right and the left, Piketty shows that inequality has intensified during the last three decades due to different tax reforms that have alleviated the tax burdens on the richest sectors of society.
It analyzes the gaps in the appropriation of the surplus between capitalists and workers, the historical differences and between countries, the particularities of the profound inequality in the world of work and the effects of the various redistribution strategies. The central message is that, beyond abstract principles of social justice, it is necessary to redistribute better because inequality is an obstacle to the development of countries and societies.
For this, it is not enough to look at who pays, or how moderate or ambitious a redistributive policy is in its scope: it is also necessary to consider its impact on the entire economic system, and discuss advantages and disadvantages of each measure.
Thus, Piketty assesses the effectiveness of social spending on health and education, employer contributions and social charges, retirement systems, the setting of a minimum wage, the role of unions, the wage gap between managers and workers low-skilled, access to credit and Keynesian demand momentum. And it advances with novel ideas to understand how inequities are generated and choose the best tools for the redistribution of wealth.
Capital and ideology
Ideology instead of ideas, that is the question without a doubt. Because it is very different to contribute and add ideas to project all ideas towards a common, tendentious, interested imaginary. Today's ideology sucks because it long ago succumbed to interests under the most unsuspected blackmails. But it is also true that there is much of that saying: "nothing new under the sun." And it is that the forms change but not the ends. And Piketty does in this child's book discovering the naked Emperor to the bewilderment of all, absorbed by the deception.
Thomas Piketty has been able to access fiscal and historical sources that different governments have refused to offer until now. Based on the study of these unpublished data, the author proposes an economic, social, intellectual and political history of inequality, from class and slave societies to modern postcolonial and hyper-capitalist societies, passing through colonialist, communist and social democratic societies.
Long live socialism !: Chronicles 2016-2020
There is the saying that announces that whoever was not a communist in youth has no heart and whoever remains a communist in adulthood has no brain... Then there are also great beacons of the most recalcitrant right that point to their departure from the socialist ideology of their youth as the rescue plan of a sect. But the evidence is that the alternative is not going well for us. Basically, because currently proposed capitalism proposes that we live with unlimited resources in constant growth. And there are neither unlimited resources nor can we grow over the abyss...
«If they had told me in 1990 that in 2020 I was going to publish a collection of chronicles entitled Long live socialism! I would have thought it was a bad joke. I belong to a generation that did not have time to be seduced by communism and that came of age noting the absolute failure of Sovietism, "says Thomas Piketty in the unpublished preface to this collection of his monthly columns published in Le Monde from September 2016 to July 2020.
In the XNUMXs he was more liberal than socialist, but thirty years later he believes that hypercapitalism has gone too far and that we must think about overcoming capitalism, in a new form of socialism, participatory and decentralized, federal and democratic, ecological and feminist. .
These columns, complete with additional graphics, tables and texts by the author, and which constitute a synthesis of the thinking of one of the most important economists of our time, reflect on how real change, "participatory socialism", will only occur when the citizens recover the tools that allow them to organize their own collective life. In addition, they represent an exhaustive review of all the major economic, political and social issues of recent times, from the functioning of the EU, Brexit, the increase in inequality, the strength of China and the new axes of world power. or the most recent health and economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
